


i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)

by D20Owlbear



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale is a shepherdess, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is a skald, Dying of nervousness giving your many times over wife flowers is peak gay, F/F, GNC Crowley, Grand Gestures, Ineffable Wives | Female Aziraphale/Female Crowley (Good Omens), The Inherent Tenderness of the Intricate Rituals, Vikings, a nervous bundle of anxiete, because those are important too, but also the small ones, flower picking, gender nonconforming Crowley, rated G for Crowley acting like they've never been married before, shirt making, the love language of going through great lengths to tell them you love them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:15:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27854930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/D20Owlbear/pseuds/D20Owlbear
Summary: "But–" Crowley said suddenly, stepping forward on feet only just practiced enough at walking to keep from tripping. She stopped before Aziraphale, standing in her doorway and leaning on the side of it. "But you love it here, you're meant to stay, aren't you?" She asked, the wonder of the question raw and bright in her throat.Crowley was a skald, she was meant to travel and bring word from place to place, to teach their stories and lores and to inspire humans to take hold of their lives and do as they pleased (and if that was for good or for ill, she'd take credit for one and be pleased about the other). She carried her tagelharpa and played it as she spun stories as surely as Aziraphale spun yarn for Crowley's new favorite shirt. But Aziraphale was meant to stay, she had a home here, where she lived and shepherded people just as well as she kept a flock of sheep.Crowley comes back to Aziraphale, every time she comes back, and every time she is welcomed and it feels like dying because of how happy it makes her. Every time she comes back, she does so willingly, and she surrenders her life to Aziraphale, for now and for ever.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 33
Collections: Ineffable Wives Exchange 2020





	i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MickyRC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MickyRC/gifts).



> For a pinch hit for the wives exchange! Glad I got the chance to do this, it was a lot of fun! For the fill of the prompt below:
> 
> "gender fuckery--they/them or he/him pronouns, casual binder use, anything like that, for one or both of them. just give me genderqueer wlw and I will love you forever"
> 
> Poem is [ee cumming's "i carry your heart with me(i carry it in"](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/49493/i-carry-your-heart-with-mei-carry-it-in)

"I– did you, I– I mean," Crowley stuttered, choking a bundle of purple flowers in her hands as she did her best to keep her knees from shaking hard enough to topple her, even though she'd just as happily kneel at Aziraphale's feet as not.

The flowers had come from all over, gathered over the course of a few days, and carefully packaged like humans do to keep them from dying too early. It felt like it meant more that way, to go from bog to glen to mountainside, trekking under her own bodily power on her quest for this bouquet, without any aid of the supernatural. It was a bit like tea, Aziraphale might say; the conjured version with a dash of holy or occult power tasted just fine, and a human might not really notice. But made by hand it was sweeter, and purer tasting, without their magics to influence the simple, earth-bound goodness of it. Crowley, of course, just thought that it was a bit like freedom; to do things without tying them back to Hell and the powers of it.

So, she trekked and quested and gathered; cranesbill from the woods, rosebay from rocky crags, heath and harebell from the mountains, flowering rosemary from the peaty bogs. Because they were pretty, and because they were purple. Crowley wasn't entirely sure Aziraphale knew what they meant; that men brought these flowers to their sweethearts to woo them, to ask for their hand, to enter into a courtship with them. But it was nearly universal, at least, that picking pretty flowers for a woman meant you liked her. And if that's all Aziraphale got from it, that would be fine too.

And now she was at Aziraphale's door, four steps away and her angel was standing there on the threshold of her home, and Crowley was below her looking up the steps. Aziraphale only smiled; that small, pleased expression she made whenever she was happy enough to want to hide it. In her hands was a shirt, a somewhat threadbare thing with precise stitching but of imprecise weft. She had made it herself, and there wasn't even a hint of miracle about it. Crowley's tongue stuck behind her teeth and wouldn't budge even as her throat worked to get out whatever words she could think of, leaving her a blushing wreck on the steps of Aziraphale's home.

She couldn't speak for how overwhelmed she was, and the sheer enormity of what Aziraphale was giving over to her inundated Crowley with waves and floods of affection and love. As a demon, she was surely no match for something so pure. It took nearly a hundred hours to card and spin the fibers alone, and then time to weave it, and further than that Aziraphale had gone and embroidered it! Dyed, thin thread spun for this purpose alone! Crowley had never before wished she could sense love like angels could so much as in this moment, for surely the love held in this shirt, all focused on Crowley, would kill her. But she would die happy for it.

The nålebinding stitches were thick, not coarse so much as a little loose. The fibers themselves were made from the stalks of stinging nettles; rich with the labor put into it and soaked until smooth to the touch, each fiber thin and silky and finicky to work properly into thread. The embroidery, sewn into the hems in the shapes of snakes and hares with apple blossoms between them, was made of even thinner threads and dyed a handsome madder-root red, which spoke of further work.

"Yours!" Crowley croaked, shoving the crushed stalks in her hand out to the angel. Even as weak as she'd just shown herself to be, the flowers knew better than to wilt. Just a touch of a threat worked better than magic for that in any case, Crowley had found.

"Oh, my dear," Aziraphale's smile got just a little smaller as she did her best to hide it. Her cheeks flushed like perfect apples; her eyes fluttered as she looked up at Crowley. _Surely_ she must know what she did to Crowley? Right? She _had_ to, she– Aziraphale made her a shirt.

"This is yours," Aziraphale murmured demurely and held out the shirt to Crowley, taking the flowers as soon as Crowley reached out for the exchange. The nettle bast shirt was light and airy under her fingers. It wasn't any sort of tight-knit and any shirt like this made by mortal hands might have fallen apart after a few months of use, unraveled, and collapsed in on itself, Crowley made sure that wouldn't happen. A brief pass of power over it as Crowley stared at the delicate embroidery went unheralded by a snap at all, even though it was the polite thing to do, ensured it'd weather all the rest of eternity looking as bright and new and loved as it did today.

"I love it, angel," Crowley sniffed, doing her best to keep it together. Enough of the town already thought she was odd — they could scarcely tell if she was man or woman with how she bound her small chest smaller and fought as a man might and traveled and wandered as a skald telling tales (and creating mischief) as she liked. Crying or falling to her knees over a shirt, even from someone so beautiful as Aziraphale, would surely turn heads.

Crowley drew her fingers over the embroidery at the hem, the threads catching delicately on the rough calluses she had from her axe and her tagelharpa that she played, as she wove her tales of heroes and misdeeds and all the things between, at the fires of people she'd only just met.

"But–" Crowley said suddenly, stepping forward on feet only just practiced enough at walking to keep from tripping. She stopped before Aziraphale, standing in her doorway and leaning on the side of it. "But you love it here, you're meant to stay, aren't you?" She asked, the wonder of the question raw and bright in her throat.

Crowley was a skald, she was meant to travel and bring word from place to place, to teach their stories and lores and to inspire humans to take hold of their lives and do as they pleased (and if that was for good or for ill, she'd take credit for one and be pleased about the other). She carried her tagelharpa and played it as she spun stories as surely as Aziraphale spun yarn for Crowley's new favorite shirt. But Aziraphale was meant to stay, she had a home here, where she lived and shepherded people just as well as she kept a flock of sheep.

Crowley couldn't stay, just as certainly as Aziraphale couldn't go.

Aziraphale nodded. Her blush faded, as did her small, secret smile just for them. And then she was the picture of seriousness and sincerity. "Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? We've not been trothed to each other in some time…"

Crowley made a sound that would eventually be a perfect match for the first time someone fell onto the keys of an untuned piano.

"I– uh– shhrfg– no?" Crowley stuttered and closed her eyes, well aware of the bright red of her cheeks and desperately willing them to go away. She hated how her tongue felt too bulky for her mouth. It always seemed to, whenever Aziraphale got that look in her eyes.

"Oh, no?" Aziraphale expressions turned to a moue and she looked up at Crowley through thick lashes. Suddenly Crowley couldn't breathe at all with Aziraphale so close, and her tongue was too thick to speak. Aziraphale's hand touched her chest, fisted in her tunic. She would have fallen without it.

"I mean, ye– yeah, 'f course, angel. Always, anytime, just name the place," Crowley babbled, her shoulders curled in as her hands moved of their own volition to alight gently on Aziraphale's hips. She crowded up against the softness of Aziraphale standing in the doorway. All the tension between them built higher and higher, a sweet thing that tasted of honey, thick and cloying until Crowley could take it no longer.

Her tongue darted out to lick her lips; nerves maybe, but only the kind that made her heart pound with elation rather than fear, she leaned down to close the space between them. Crowley's lips pressed sweetly against Aziraphale's, who had the audacity to gasp about it and pretend she was surprised at the boldness. Crowley hummed deep in her throat and leaned in more, smiling as Aziraphale tilted her head to deepen the kiss. Aziraphale flattened the palm of her hand on Crowley's chest, her fingertips catching on the edges of the wraps that Crowley wore underneath her shirt along the length of her ribs, underneath her arms. With her fingertips, she plucked at the ridges of them through layers of fabric until Crowley could feel them loose enough to warrant pulling back to keep her breasts bound flat.

"Angel," Crowley huffed, smiling, "You're gonna be the death of me, you know that?"

Aziraphale pouted again, a put-upon thing that made Crowley want nothing more than to tease her until she was scrunching up her face from trying not to laugh. Crowley stepped impossibly closer, until her knee slotted between Aziraphale's, and she pressed Aziraphale back against the frame of the door. She reveled in the soft gasp that fell from Aziraphale's lips.

"Would you have me?" Crowley asked, her voice low and her lips little more than a breath away from Aziraphale's. Every exhale from the angel before her was taken in and breathed out once again by Crowley, and the air between them was thick with all the things they hadn't spoken in decades.

"Yes," Aziraphale replied firmly, looking Crowley in her eyes even through the dark glass that sat between their gazes, "Always. You were made for me, that I'm sure of."

A sharp, jagged thing cracked inside Crowley. She ducked her head to bury her face in the crook of Aziraphale's neck, pressing herself tight to Aziraphale's body and wrapping her arms around Aziraphale's waist.

Aziraphale crooned and hummed softly, murmuring into Crowley's ears even as she delicately plucked the braids from Crowley's hair. She carded her fingers through the wine-dark locks and lay sweet kisses to the side of her face, never shying from the brand on her temple. Crowley drew in shuddering breaths and fought to pull herself back under control. She knew very well her feet and legs and up long her spine was now covered in bumpy scales more fit for a slithering, crawling reptile than human skin.

Moments passed—it could have been eternities and Crowley didn't think she'd have noticed if that were the case—before Crowley pulled herself from Aziraphale's embrace with a blush high on her cheeks and a voice roughened from containing all the multitudes of herself.

"Angel," Crowley started and halted and tripped over her own tongue before she could force out the rest, "Did– didja mean that? The– the made for you?" She whispered.

Aziraphale gently took Crowley's face between her hands and pulled her the scant few inches down to meet her in a kiss sweet as honeyed wine and gentle as the break of the sun in the morning, and pulled back just as easily as the kiss started.

"Of course, my dear," Aziraphale said softly. The pads of her fingers stroked along the ridge of Crowley's cheekbones so gently that Crowley's eyes drooped closed and she was sure she would die of her angel's love. "You, my heart, have been beside me for as long as time has been in the purview of man. You have walked with me for miles unending. You have given to me everything my heart has desired—including yourself—and I fully intend to troth myself to you whenever I can so that all may know how my heart holds room for you as She knows."

Crowley trembled and her hands gently held Aziraphale's wrists in place so that she could nuzzle against the palms of her hands. They were calloused in different ways from Crowley's; smaller and more precise from her needlework and the loom and the spindle whorls. Hers were hands splotched with dark dyes and inks, hands that created because they liked to, no matter what they had been fashioned for before the world began.

"Angel," Crowley croaked after a few moments of silence, "I would like to marry you, again, always. I want to have your hands in mine and to hold you when it is cold. I want to walk beside you and stay with you until we reach the ends of the earth, and then I want to fly with you further. I want to give you everything you have ever wanted. Any desire you have, name it, and it will be yours! And I will do so happily so that I may shelter in the room in your heart you have prepared for me."

The space between them was too much even as it was nonexistent. What were atoms but too much space vibrating at frequencies beyond human perception? And what were angels and demons but unbound by form and shape unless they wished for it? Though their forms did not change in any perceptible way, Aziraphale and Crowley communed with each other, and touched upon those rooms in their hearts that they carried for each other and left their marks gentle and sweet upon the walls of them so that together they felt like a home.

"My wife," Aziraphale murmured, blinking her eyes open and leaned in to rest her head on Crowley's chest with a smile.


End file.
